Waterworks
by Hairspray
Summary: Lenny Ritt, nee Lenore, is a mutant who can manipulate water, which is why her parents kick her out. She busks in New York City for a living. One day, after a performance, she is approached by a mysterious woman. Readreview, pls.


[Author's Notes: I might change the title in the future, but I'll let it stick for now. None of the X-Men belong to me. The line Lenny uses after her show I stole from a very funny Christchurch busker. I'll leave the fact as to whether she is or isn't a MS up to you... Enough of my chit-chat. R+R, as they say. :)]

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I liked birthday parties. Mine, especially. On my seventh birthday, we had a clown who did bubble tricks. I remembered my favourite was when he got me to stand on a tray of soap solution and he brought the bubble wand up around me. I was in a bubble tube, and I giggled and spread my arms and burst it. My new shirt got wet, but I got the clown to do it a second time, and a third, until he told he had other tricks he had to do. Who was I to keep a clown from doing his job?

So when I thought to myself, "Well, Lenny, what are you going to do now that your parents have thrown your eighteen-year-old ass out of the house for being a mutant?" My first answer was, "Run to the big city, of course." Then, when I finally arrived in New York, I elaborated: "Run to the big city and do bubble tricks for money."

I had no money for soap. I didn't need soap.

"Holy cow, that's almost twelve inches big," I crowed at the crowd, gesturing at the seven-year-old boy who so graciously rose to my challenge of blowing the biggest bubble ever to be blown in Central Park. "Give Adam a hand, folks! He's got lungs of steel."

The tourists broke into appreciative applause, Mr. and Mrs. Adam's Parents applauding the loudest of all. I clapped along with them and at the same time focusing on the bubble, making sure the soapless water maintained a bubble-like consistency and thickness. I used to be really bad at that and got weird-looking bubbles, for which I received weird-looking glances from my audience. I had improved, however, and the crowd was enjoying the show. Well, as much as tourists sweating in the summer could. 

I usually let the bubbles reach a diameter of twelve inches or so before I popped it. This one was pushing thirteen before I let it loose. Adam jumped back as the water splashed in his face, and the applause became louder. I grinned, relieved that I didn't have to concentrate on anything anymore. Adam probably did blow the largest bubble ever blown in Central Park.

As the crowd broke up to leave, I ran to them with my fedora in my hand, asking for tips. They were a generous crowd this time, except for a heavyset man in shorts and a brand name t-shirt who had already started skulking away before my applause died down.

"You hear that squeaking, folks?" I said, pointing to the man. "That is the sound of a tightass walking away!"

I got the line from another street performer I often saw around. He juggled and made balloon animals, but was also sharp as a razor. I hoped he wouldn't mind me stealing his line. Not that he could do anything about it.

Some of the crowd laughed appreciatively, but most were already on their way to the next tourist trap. People came to New York for the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, not to see the freak mutant girl who could do freaky things with water. 

Not that I looked like a freak mutant girl. On a TV in a window display, I saw this mutant who was blue all over. At least I looked normal. Black hair, shorn short for convenience (and lack of means to buy appropriate conditioner), dark grey eyes, middling height. (Don't you love that word? 'Middling'? No one ever says 'middling' anymore. They should.)

I counted my money as I walked away, bag of supplies hanging on my elbow, when someone fell in step beside me. I looked up. It was a girl, maybe a few years older than me. _NYU or Columbia_? I wondered, _or maybe Juilliard?_ She was a tall girl with a shock of red hair and friendly eyes, in a Bad Religion t-shirt and clunky-looking boots.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey," I said. "Did you enjoy the show?"

"I did," she smiled. "It's amazing how you keep the bubbles so bubble-like considering you didn't have any soap."

"Hah!" I exclaimed, a little too loudly. "Of course there was soap. They're bubbles, aren't they? Why wouldn't there be soap?"

"I think we both know why, Lenorah Ritt."

I stopped in my tracks. Bad Religion girl followed suit.

"How do you know my name?" I demanded.

"You and I need to talk, Lenorah," said the girl, and for a moment, just for a moment, her eyes flashed gold.

++

"I've never been propositioned to help annihilate the human race before," I wanted to say. "Perhaps you mistake me for a goth. My uberwhiteness can be misleading."

But of course, I didn't say anything. If what Mystique said was true, that the old man in the corner could stick the cutlery in my back without moving a muscle, and that the kid pretending to read Coelho two booths down could burn me alive, then all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there. Circumstances being what they were, I couldn't.

"So what's your mutation?" I asked Mystique.

She grinned. "You're seeing it."

"What? Is it the eye thing? The changing-your-eye-colour thing?"

She only sipped her lemonade, smirking at me, and continued talking. I continued stalling for time as I tried to remember why the name Mystique was so familiar. It hit me at the fourth beat of the bush.

Liberty Island. UN diplomats. Big-ass scary machine.

Oh _shit_.

And gone was the more reassuring thought that they were just your average doomsday cult. I did the one thing I could do in such a situation: I beat around the bush some more.

"They make great tomato juice here, don't they?" I opined.

Mystique tapped the side of her glass, giving me a long and thoughtful look. "I can make this easy for you: come with us, or."

_Or? Or what?_ But inside I knew what she meant. She didn't even have to say 'or else.' Just 'or.' World annihilation and homicide, all in one day. How on earth could I be of use to them? To the Brotherhood of Mutants, as she called them? I asked her this.

"It is not your place to ask right now," said Mystique, taking out a few bills and leaving them on the table. "Right now, we go."

I choked on my juice. "Go? Wha… _where_? I didn't even say yes!"

She raised a perfect eyebrow. "You were going to say no?"

"…No," I said, weakly.

"Come along."

We went outside and waited for something, or someone, on the sidewalk. I didn't dare ask who. I didn't dare ask what was happening though I dearly wanted to know. I wanted to be alive by the end of the day.

This was terribly unfair. Mystique had hardly told me anything about this Brotherhood of hers or why she was forcing me to join, and yet here I was.

A sleek black limousine pulled up to the curb. Mystique opened the car door and gestured for me to get in.

"Aren't those, um…" I pointed behind me at the old man and the boy in the restaurant. "Aren't they coming too?"

"They will later," she said. "And, by the way." Mystique grabbed my bag of bubble-blowing supplies from me and tossed it in a nearby trash can. "You really won't need those where you're going. Get in."

I did, and Mystique climbed in beside me. I pressed myself against the door as far away from her as I could.

"How are you, ladies?" said the driver. British, from the sound of it. And, when I looked in the rearview mirror, green-skinned.

"Drive," was all Mystique said. I said nothing when her skin suddenly morphed into blue scales. Her hair stayed the same. There was nothing I could possibly say that wouldn't have too many exclamation marks in it.

The limousine pulled away and suddenly I wished I was seven again, with friends and a home and presents on the table, back before any of this shit happened, before I became a mutant… before I spread my arms out and popped the bubble.

**To be continued.**

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[So that's all for now. Thanks for reading this far. I ought to be working on Chapter 2 very soon.]


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